("Madam How and Lady Why" (First Lessons in Earth Lore for...)
"Madam How and Lady Why" (First Lessons in Earth Lore for Children) remains a classic juvenile work by Charles Kingsley. It deals with natural phenomenon and gives readers a basic understanding of geologic and earth knowledge. An excellent book for children and those interested in the writings of Charles Kingsley.
(Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face by the English writ...)
Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face by the English writer Charles Kingsley tells the story of a young monk and is a classic fictionalised account of the life of the philosopher Hypatia. Any profits made from the sale of this book will go towards supporting the Freeriver Community project, a project that aims to support community and encourage well-being. To learn more about the Freeriver Community project please visit the website- www.freerivercommunity.com
(The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a child...)
The Water-Babies, A Fairy Tale for a Land Baby is a children's novel by the Reverend Charles Kingsley. Written in 1862 63 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, it was first published in its entirety in 1863. It was written as part satire in support of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. The book was extremely popular in England, and was a mainstay of British children's literature for many decades, but eventually fell out of favour in part due to its prejudices (common at the time) against Irish, Jews, Americans, and the poor
The heroes, or, Greek fairy tales for my children . By: Charles Kingsley
(Charles KINGSLEY (1819 - 1875) The Heroes, or Greek Fairy...)
Charles KINGSLEY (1819 - 1875) The Heroes, or Greek Fairy Tales for my Children by Charles Kingsley is a collection of three Greek mythology stories: Perseus, The Argonauts, and Theseus. The author had a great fondness for Greek fairy tales and believed the adventures of the characters would inspire children to achieve higher goals with integrity.
was the English author and clergyman. He became the ideal of "Muscular Christianity" through his books and active, many-faceted life.
Background
Charles Kingsley was born at Holne on June 12, 1819. He was the son of a country parson
Sprung on the father's side from an old English race of country squires, and on his mother's side from a good West Indian family who had been slaveholders for generations, he had a keen love of sport and a genuine sympathy with country-folk, but he had at the same time something of the scorn for lower races to be found in the members of a dominant race.
Education
He was educated at private schools and at King's College, London, after his father's promotion to the rectory of St Luke's, Chelsea.
In 1838 he entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, and in 1842 he was ordained to the curacy of Evers- ley in Hampshire, to the rectory of which he was not long afterwards presented, and this, with short intervals, was his home for the remaining thirty-three years of his life.
He was an enthusiastic student in particular of natural history and geology.
Career
Shortly after graduation in 1842, he was ordained an Anglican priest.
in 1848 he published his first volume, The Saint's Tragedy.
In 1861 he tutored the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, in history. From the first Kingsley had been anti-Roman Catholic
The scenery of both made a great impression on his mind, and was afterwards described with singular vividness in his writings.
In 1859 h'e became chaplain to Queen Victoria; in 1860 he was appointed to the professorship of modern history at Cambridge, which he resigned in 1869; and soon after he was appointed to a canonry at Chester.
In 1873 this was exchanged for a canonry at Westminster.
With the exception of occasional changes of residence in England, generally for the sake of his wife's health, one or two short holiday trips abroad, a tour in the West Indies, and another in America to visit his eldest son settled there as an engineer, his life was spent in the peaceful, if active, occupations of a clergyman who did his duty earnestly, and of a vigorous and prolific writer.
While in this phase he wrote his novels Yeast and Alton Locke, in which, though he pointed out unsparingly the folly of extremes, he certainly sympathized not only with the poor, but with much that was done and said by the leaders in the Chartist movement.
He was bitterly opposed to what he considered to be the medievalism and narrowness of the Oxford Tractarian Movement.
In Macmillan's Magazine for January 1864 he asserted that truth for its own sake was not obligatory with the Roman Catholic clergy, quoting as his authority John Henry Newman.
In the ensuing controversy Kingsley was completely discomfited.
As with his own teacher, Maurice, his influence on other men rather consisted in inducing them to think for themselves than in leading them to adopt his own views, never, perhaps, very definite.
The descriptions of South American scenery in Westward Ho!, of the Egyptian desert in Hypatia, of the North Devon scenery in Two Years Ago, are among the most brilliant pieces of word- painting in English prose-writing; and the American scenery is even more vividly and more truthfully described when he had seen it only by the eye of his imagination than in his work At Last, which was written after he had visited the tropics.
Andromeda is a very successful attempt at naturalizing the hexameter as a form of English verse, and reproduces with great skill the sonorous roll of the Greek original.
For 20 years he poured out poems, literary and scientific essays, stories for children--of which the best known is The Water-Babies (1863) --and novels of reform.
"Kingsley's life was written by his widow in 1877, entitled Charles Kingsley, his Letters and Memories of his Life, and presents a very- touching and beautiful picture of her husband, but perhaps hardly does justice to his humour, his wit, his overflowing vitality and boyish fun.
In 1848, with Frederick Denison Maurice and J. M. Ludlow, he founded Christian Socialism.
The more orthodox and conservative elements in his character gained the upper hand as time went on, but careful students of him and his writings will find a deep conservatism underlying the most radical utterances of his earlier years, while a passionate sympathy for the poor, the afflicted and the weak held possession of him till the last hour of his life. Both as a writer and in his personal intercourse with men, Kingsley was a thoroughly stimulating teacher.
Politics
Yet even then he considered that the true leaders of the people were a peer and a dean, and there was no real inconsistency in the fact that at a later period he was among the most strenuous defenders of Governor Eyre in the measures adopted by him to put down the Jamaican disturbances.
His politics might therefore have been described as Toryism tempered by sympathy, or as Radicalism tempered by hereditary scorn of subject races.
But no collection has been made of some of his more characteristic writings in the Christian Socialist and Politics for the People, many of them signed by the pseudonym he then assumed, " Parson Lot. " "
Views
With the sympathetic organization which made him keenly sensible of the wants of the poor, he threw himself heartily into the movement known as Christian Socialism, of which Frederick Denison Maurice was the recognized leader, and for many years he was considered as an extreme radical in a profession the traditions of which were conservative.
Personality
Kingsley was tall and spare, sinewy rather than powerful, and of a restless excitable temperament.
His complexion was swarthy, his hair dark, and his eye bright and piercing.
His sympathy for children taught him how to secure their interests.
His temper was hot, kept under rigid control; his disposition tender, gentle and loving, with flashing scorn and indignation against all that was ignoble and impure; he was a good husband, father and friend.
Interests
Sport, country-folk
Connections
In 1844 he married Fanny, daughter of Pascoe Grenfell.